For his middle school community service project, our son volunteered at the Flint Hill Farm in Pennsylvania, owned and run by Kathy Fields (farmer, midwife, cheese-maker and many other amazing things). Flint Hill Farm is home to numerous goats, cows, horses, pigs, chickens, dogs and cats.

Since he was under 15 at the time, we volunteered with him, spending most of two summers feeding and milking the goats, shoveling goat poop, and collecting and washing chicken eggs. You would think washing chicken eggs wouldn’t be a problem, but yeah, it is.

Toward the end of the summer Kathy taught us how to wash a cow, and we will be forever grateful.

In “How to Wash a Cow” the instructions are easy to follow. We set the cows in upper Manhattan, where you'll see Gopie, Daisy and Buttercup in front of the Little Red Lighthouse, the Dyckman Farmhouse, the United Palace of Cultural Arts, Jazz at Marjorie Eliot’s and others.

Spoiler alert: Evil horseflies add the necessary amount of literary tension, but there’s a happy ending.

WordUp! Bookstore in Washington Heights still has a copy or two.